1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a handheld device with a display that can zoom in or out according to a signal received from a zoom control device. More specifically, a handheld device that changes font and icon sizes according to input received from a zoom control device is disclosed.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Handheld devices with displays for presenting visual information have become increasingly common. Notable examples of such devices include cellular telephones and personal data assistants (PDA). These devices can present such information as telephone numbers, names, messages, addresses, stock quotes, etc. This information is typically in the form of text, icons, or a mixture of the two. For example, when presenting a telephone number, the device may display only a number, which would be text-only information. Or, it may display the telephone number next to a small image of a telephone, which is a mixture, then, of both text and icons. Icons are useful for quickly communicating simple ideas or information to the user:
Please refer to FIG. 1. FIG. 1 is a diagram of a cellular 10 telephone displaying a list of telephone numbers 12. The list of telephone numbers 12 is shown on a display 14. As the display 14 is quite small, only a single name and number can be shown at a time. Consequently, to find and view a particular name, the user most page up or down the list a name at a time. This can be quite inconvenient if the list of telephone numbers 12 is long. If the text used to display the list of telephone numbers 12 were slightly smaller, it would be possible to display more names and numbers per display entry. This would lessen the number of times the user would have to page up or down to find the desired name and number.
At the other extreme, text or icons displayed in a handheld device may be too small to be conveniently read or viewed. Please refer to FIG. 2. FIG. 2 is a diagram of a PDA 20. The PDA 20 is displaying lines of text 22 on a display 24. The size of the text 22 has been made quite small so that a sufficient number of lines may be squeezed onto the display 24. Unfortunately, this can make the text 22 nearly unreadable.
Several methods have been adopted to overcome these problems. For cellular telephones and PDAs alike, the most common method has been to provide options to change the scale, or point size, of the displayed font. Generally speaking, selecting a larger font makes for easier reading of text, but with a corresponding reduction in the amount of information that can be viewed at one time on the display. Conversely, smaller font sizes permit more information to be taken in at a glance on the display, but are more difficult to read. In either case, the user must work his or her way through various menu options on the cellular telephone or PDA to effect the change in font size. This action is tedious for the user, and must be repeated any time the user wishes to change the font size.
It is therefore a primary objective of this invention to provide a handheld device with zoom functionality that is controlled by a dedicated zoom input device. The zoom input device is used to change the size of displayed text and icons.
The present invention, briefly summarized, discloses a handheld device with a display for presenting an image to a user, a processor electrically connected to the display, memory electrically connected to the processor, and an input panel electrically connected to the processor. The input panel has a number of keys for generating key signals, and a zoom control device for generating a zoom control signal. The display is used to present both text and iconic information to a user. A display program, held in the memory, will change the font size of displayed text or icons according to the zoom control signal. When doing so, the display program selects a proper amount of text or icons to be displayed with in the boundary of the display, and arranges the selected text or icons within the display.
It is an advantage of the present invention that the zoom control device, in conjunction with the display program, allows the user to quickly change the size of text and icons on the display. This enables the user to quickly zoom out to view more information on the display, or zoom in to more easily read the displayed information.